Omaha bars use Jell-O shots to fight food insecurity at the College World Series
.jpg "This year at Rocco’s in Omaha, owner Kevin Culjat will donate $1 to each team’s local food bank for each Jell-O shot purchased.")
Kelvin Culjat faced a dilemma few bar owners encounter.
He was out of Jell-O.
Culjat, the owner of Rocco’s and Lefty’s sports bars in downtown Omaha, scrambled across Nebraska and neighboring states to buy more supplies for his annual Jell-O shot competition during the College World Series.
Fans of each of the eight teams in the MCWS compete to see which fan base buys the most Jell-O shots at the two bars across the street from Charles Schwab Stadium by the end of the tournament. In 2019, Arkansas fans set the record at 860. Culjat displayed a flier and challenged others to break it. So, in 2021, Mississippi State fans bought more than 2,500 shots in three hours.
When Arkansas returned in 2022, their fans drank 3,000 in three hours. Not to be outdone by their rivals, Ole Miss fans matched it — leaving Culjat without Jell-O before the first day of the tournament ended.
“I had one gentleman buy a thousand,” Culjat said. “I knew I had a problem on my hand.”
What Culjat started as a way to get more attention to Rocco’s restaurant became a local and national craze, with social media tracking the leaderboard day-by-day and fans across the country watching the numbers climb. Last year, Ole Miss fans crushed the first record, consuming 18,777 Jell-O shots after two weeks and a national championship.
There wasn’t much profit from Jell-O shots, but Culjat wanted to do more than pocket the money. He found that many employees of the University of Mississippi use the school’s food bank. But with students off campus, the pantry ran low. So, before the tournament ended, Culjat decided he would donate $2 for each shot a fan purchased for the top two teams’ local food bank. At the end of the CWS, he donated more than $37,000 to Ole Miss’ food bank.
“I didn’t expect them to drink 18,777,” Culjat said. “It was the biggest donation that the food bank had received in 29 years.
“We wrote another $16,000 to Arkansas. It was pretty rewarding to do that.”
This year for the CWS — featuring TCU, Florida, Wake Forest, Virginia, Oral Robers, LSU, Stanford and Tennessee — Culjat will donate $1 to each school’s food bank and 50 cents to the Heartland food bank in Omaha.
Culjat also built a 16-foot bar in Rocco’s just for Jell-O shots, and hired JEVO to make shots over the course of the tournament. The company pledged to donate its profits to charity, too.
With TCU back in Omaha, it’s special for Culjat, as he attended high school with Jim Duggan — former Horned Frogs quarterback Max Duggan’s father — and coached Max growing up.
He said he can’t attempt to guess how many shots TCU fans will buy in Omaha, and it will depend on how far TCU can get into the tournament, but Horned Frog fans have been eager for another run at the CWS.
“Last year Mississippi drank 18,000, and Stanford only drank like 230,” Culjat said. “There’s schools that are baseball schools, then there’s schools that have baseball teams. We followed the Horned Frogs in football, and we’ve followed their baseball team, so we’re really excited to raise some money for their food bank.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2023 at 10:28 AM.